Amazon alexander hamilton biography

He was commissioned and served six years under George Washington , became a hero of the Battle of Yorktown , served brilliantly as Secretary of the Treasury , and later as Deputy Chief of the U. Army as Major General; A passionate and controversial figure, Hamilton established the basis for the economic powerhouse that the United States would become, only to be senselessly killed in a duel by Aaron Burr, the Vice President of the United States, across the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey on July 12, Upon learning of his death there was general lamentation in New York, and other Federalist city strongholds, such as Boston and Philadelphia.

Charles Biddle, Aaron's Burr friend, admitted there was as much lamentation as when George Washington died. Hamilton's public funeral was financed by the merchants of New York. Historian Ron Chernow describes the funeral scene: " New York militia units set out at the head of the funeral procession, bearing their arms in reversed position, their muzzles pointed downward.

Numerous clergymen and members of the Society of the Cincinnati trooped behind them Preceded by two small black boys in white turbans, eight pallbearers shouldered Hamilton's corpse, set in a rich mahogany casket with his hat and sword perched on top. Hamilton's gray horse trailed behind with the boots and spurs of its former rider reversed in the stirrups.

There was no middle ground for the sentiments he evoked during his lifetime. Nevertheless, both friends and foes marveled at his genius. Chernow's book has an interesting amalgam of opinions about Hamilton by famous contemporaries who knew him: New York Judge Ambrose Spencer who frequently presided over legal courtroom battles opined that Hamilton "was the greatest man his country ever produced In power of reasoning Hamilton was the equal of [Daniel] Webster In creative power, Hamilton was infinitely Webster's superior.

Livingston say that Hamilton's reach of thought was so far beyond theirs that by his side they were schoolboys -- rush tapers before the sun on noonday. John M. Mason: " Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend and collaborator James Madison about the time of the Jay Treaty a winning political issue for the Republicans in "He is really a colossus to the anti-Republican party.

Without numbers, he is a host [i. We have only middling performances to oppose him. In truth, when he comes forward, there is nobody but yourself, who can meet him. He opposed Hamilton legislatively but not with the pen, and the Treaty was approved for the good of the country, which was totally unprepared for war. When Jefferson was President of the United States, he charged Albert Gallatin, his new Secretary of the Treasury and a political foe of Hamilton, to rifle through files, dig up any financial material in the Department incriminating Hamilton of malfeasance.

Gallatin went at it with gusto. Gallatin wrote years later: "Well Gallatin, what have you found? Any change should be made in it would injure it. Hamilton made no blunders, committed no frauds. He did nothing wrong. The praise was not restricted to sectarian Americans. The French Revolution exile, the duc de La Rochefoucald-Liancourt, noted; "the lack of interest in money, rare anywhere, but even rarer in America is one of the most universally recognized traits of Mr.

He divined Europe. Army, Hamilton even contained the Whiskey Rebellion without bloodshed -- all of which promoted the peace and prosperity of the new nation. When asked, during a dinner meeting at the historic Fraunces Tavern, "Who was right about America, Jefferson or Hamilton? Miguel A. Faria Jr. He is Clinical Professor of Surgery Neurosurgery, ret.

He is the author of numerous articles on politics, history, and science, including "Stalin's Mysterious Death" and "The Political Spectrum -- From the Extreme Right and Anarchism to the Extreme Left and Communism" -- all posted at the author's websites: www. He cuts through past depictions of Hamilton as a conniving bureaucrat and secret monarchist to depict the man as both a heroic trailblazer in American political history and truly human figure of both extreme merit and deep personal flaws.

Croix in the Caribbean. Hamilton was born the natural son of a Scottish noble and a socially disgraced divorcee. His natural talents evident from a young age, Hamilton nonetheless suffered a tragic childhood that left him a penniless yet hot-blooded orphan with a dismal view of human nature and hunger for glory and prestige. Despite these miserable origins, Hamilton migrated north to college in an America poised to explode into rebellion.

A rising star, he caught the eye of a certain General Washington and became the central cog of his wartime staff and began perhaps the most impactful partnership in the fledgling nation. After settling in New York with a wife and children, the firmly principled and stubborn Hamilton entered the roiling world of New York politics. Though he expressed some decidedly undemocratic sentiments that would haunt him the rest of his life.

In doing so, Hamilton won near-total success but sowed the seeds of this later fall with his inability to answer a challenge with silence. His political fortunes waned as his sexual infidelities came to light and his many political enemies broke his poise and dismantled his support. Chernow expertly crafts Hamilton as an ambitious, talented and pugnacious man with much to prove through his letters and actions.

He also depicts Hamilton as principled and deeply spiritual as well as a flirtatious man possessing a large sexual appetite. Chernow also frequently closes sections with speculation without the proper backing of historical evidence. These flaws do little derail this otherwise exemplary biography as Chernow more than makes up for his occasional flaws in historical writing in some areas with overwhelming success in almost all others.

See more reviews. Top reviews from other countries. Translate all reviews to English. My yr-old daughter loved the musical, knows all the songs, and I surprised her with her first Big History Book. She loves it. This is one of the best entries to the early history of the Republic, through the eyes of an individual she likes rather than a welter of names and placenames.

A born Canadian with American and Polish parents, she's now willing to entertain her American heritage, and memorize the States, Capitals, and Presidents. America has always been great, Aaron Burr aside. His ideas are credited with laying the foundation for American finance and government. British historian Paul Johnson stated that Hamilton was a "genius—the only one of the Founding Fathers fully entitled to that accolade—and he had the elusive, indefinable characteristics of genius.

Hamilton was born and spent the early part of his childhood in Charlestown, the capital of Nevis in the British Leeward Islands. Hamilton and his older brother, James Jr. Rachel Lavien had married on Saint Croix [ 18 ] but left her husband and first son in , traveling to Saint Kitts where she met James Hamilton. James Hamilton later abandoned Rachel Lavien and their two sons, ostensively to "spar[e] [her] a charge of bigamy Both his mother and Hamilton contracted yellow fever , and it killed her on February 19, , leaving him effectively orphaned.

Many items were auctioned off, but a friend purchased the family's books and returned them to Hamilton. The brothers were briefly taken in by their cousin Peter Lytton. However, Lytton took his own life in July , leaving his property to his mistress and their son, and the propertyless Hamilton brothers were subsequently separated. He wrote a detailed letter to his father regarding a hurricane that devastated Christiansted on August 30, Biographer Ron Chernow found the letter astounding because "for all its bombastic excesses, it does seem wondrous [that a] self-educated clerk could write with such verve and gusto" and that a teenage boy produced an apocalyptic "fire-and-brimstone sermon" viewing the hurricane as a "divine rebuke to human vanity and pomposity.

In October , Hamilton arrived by ship in Boston and proceeded to New York City, where he took lodgings with the Irish-born Hercules Mulligan , brother of a trader known to Hamilton's benefactors, who assisted Hamilton in selling cargo that was used to pay for his education and support. While there, he came under the influence of William Livingston , a local leading intellectual and revolutionary with whom he lived for a time.

Hamilton entered Mulligan's alma mater King's College in New York City now Columbia University as a private student in the autumn of , while again boarding with Mulligan until officially matriculating in May Seabury essentially tried to provoke fear in the colonies with an objective of preventing the colonies from uniting against the British.

On May 10, , Hamilton won credit for saving his college's president, Loyalist Myles Cooper , from an angry mob by speaking to the crowd long enough to allow Cooper to escape. In , after the first engagement of American patriot troops with the British at Lexington and Concord , Hamilton and other King's College students joined a New York volunteer militia company called the Corsicans , whose name reflected the Corsican Republic that was suppressed six years earlier and young American patriots regarded as a political model to be emulated.

Hamilton drilled with the company before classes in the graveyard of nearby St. Paul's Chapel. He studied military history and tactics on his own and was soon recommended for promotion. The seizure of the cannons resulted in the unit being re-designated an artillery company. At the Battle of Trenton , the company was stationed at the high point of Trenton at the intersection of present-day Warren and Broad streets to keep the Hessians pinned in their Trenton barracks.

Hamilton participated in the Battle of Princeton on January 3, After an initial setback, Washington rallied the Continental Army troops and led them in a successful charge against the British forces. After making a brief stand, the British fell back, some leaving Princeton , and others taking up refuge in Nassau Hall. Hamilton transported three cannons to the hall, and had them fire upon the building as others rushed the front door and broke it down.

The British subsequently put a white flag outside one of the windows; [ 49 ] British soldiers walked out of the building and laid down their arms, ending the battle in an American victory. Hamilton eventually received an invitation he felt he could not refuse: to serve as George Washington 's aide with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Hamilton served four years as Washington's chief staff aide.

He handled letters to the Continental Congress , state governors, and the most powerful generals of the Continental Army. He drafted many of Washington's orders and letters under Washington's direction, and he eventually issued orders on Washington's behalf over his own signature. During the Revolutionary War, Hamilton became the close friend of several fellow officers.

His letters to the Marquis de Lafayette [ 61 ] and to John Laurens , employing the sentimental literary conventions of the late 18th century and alluding to Greek history and mythology, [ 62 ] have been read by Jonathan Ned Katz as revelatory of a homosocial or even homosexual relationship. Massey amongst others, by contrast, dismisses all such speculation as unsubstantiated, describing their friendship as purely platonic camaraderie instead and placing their correspondence in the context of the flowery diction of the time.

While on Washington's staff, Hamilton long sought command and a return to active combat. As the war drew nearer to an end, he knew that opportunities for military glory were diminishing. On February 15, , Hamilton was reprimanded by Washington after a minor misunderstanding. Although Washington quickly tried to mend their relationship, Hamilton insisted on leaving his staff.

He continued to repeatedly ask Washington and others for a field command. Washington continued to demur, citing the need to appoint men of higher rank. This continued until early July , when Hamilton submitted a letter to Washington with his commission enclosed, "thus tacitly threatening to resign if he didn't get his desired command. On July 31, Washington relented and assigned Hamilton as commander of a battalion of light infantry companies of the 1st and 2nd New York Regiments and two provisional companies from Connecticut.

Hamilton and his battalions took Redoubt No. The French also suffered heavy casualties and took Redoubt No. These actions forced the British surrender of an entire army at Yorktown, marking the de facto end of the war, although small battles continued for two more years until the signing of the Treaty of Paris and the departure of the last British troops.

He passed the bar in July after six months of self-directed education and, in October, was licensed to argue cases before the Supreme Court of New York. He expressed these criticisms in his letter to James Duane dated September 3, "The fundamental defect is a want of power in Congress While on Washington's staff, Hamilton had become frustrated with the decentralized nature of the wartime Continental Congress, particularly its dependence upon the states for voluntary financial support that was not often forthcoming.

Under the Articles of Confederation , Congress had no power to collect taxes or to demand money from the states. This lack of a stable source of funding had made it difficult for the Continental Army both to obtain its necessary provisions and to pay its soldiers. During the war, and for some time after, Congress obtained what funds it could from subsidies from the King of France, European loans, and aid requested from the several states, which were often unable or unwilling to contribute.

An amendment to the Articles had been proposed by Thomas Burke , in February , to give Congress the power to collect a five percent impost, or duty on all imports, but this required ratification by all states; securing its passage as law proved impossible after it was rejected by Rhode Island in November James Madison joined Hamilton in influencing Congress to send a delegation to persuade Rhode Island to change its mind.

Their report recommending the delegation argued the national government needed not just some level of financial autonomy, but also the ability to make laws that superseded those of the individual states. Hamilton transmitted a letter arguing that Congress already had the power to tax, since it had the power to fix the sums due from the several states; but Virginia's rescission of its own ratification of this amendment ended the Rhode Island negotiations.

While Hamilton was in Congress, discontented soldiers began to pose a danger to the young United States. Most of the army was then posted at Newburgh, New York. Those in the army were funding much of their own supplies, and they had not been paid in eight months. Furthermore, after Valley Forge , the Continental officers had been promised in May a pension of half their pay when they were discharged.

The officers had three demands: the army's pay, their own pensions, and commutation of those pensions into a lump-sum payment if Congress were unable to afford the half-salary pensions for life. Congress rejected the proposal. Several congressmen, including Hamilton, Robert Morris , and Gouverneur Morris , attempted to use the so-called Newburgh Conspiracy as leverage to secure support from the states and in Congress for funding of the national government.

They encouraged MacDougall to continue his aggressive approach, implying unknown consequences if their demands were not met, and defeated proposals designed to end the crisis without establishing general taxation: that the states assume the debt to the army, or that an impost be established dedicated to the sole purpose of paying that debt.

Hamilton suggested using the Army's claims to prevail upon the states for the proposed national funding system. Hamilton wrote Washington to suggest that Hamilton covertly "take direction" of the officers' efforts to secure redress, to secure continental funding but keep the army within the limits of moderation. On March 15, Washington defused the Newburgh situation by addressing the officers personally.

In the same month, Congress passed a new measure for a year impost—which Hamilton voted against [ 85 ] —that again required the consent of all the states; it also approved a commutation of the officers' pensions to five years of full pay. Rhode Island again opposed these provisions, and Hamilton's robust assertions of national prerogatives in his previous letter were widely held to be excessive.

In June , a different group of disgruntled soldiers from Lancaster, Pennsylvania , sent Congress a petition demanding their back pay. When they began to march toward Philadelphia , Congress charged Hamilton and two others with intercepting the mob. Jackson was unsuccessful. The mob arrived in Philadelphia, and the soldiers proceeded to harangue Congress for their pay.

Hamilton argued that Congress ought to adjourn to Princeton, New Jersey. Congress agreed, and relocated there. This resolution contained many features of the future Constitution of the United States, including a strong federal government with the ability to collect taxes and raise an army. It also included the separation of powers into the legislative , executive , and judicial branches.

Hamilton resigned from Congress in He specialized in defending Tories and British subjects, as in Rutgers v. Waddington , in which he defeated a claim for damages done to a brewery by the Englishmen who held it during the military occupation of New York. He pleaded for the mayor's court to interpret state law consistent with the Treaty of Paris, which had ended the Revolutionary War.

Long dissatisfied with the Articles of Confederation as too weak to be effective, Hamilton played a major leadership role at the Annapolis Convention. He drafted its resolution for a constitutional convention, and in doing so brought one step closer to reality his longtime desire to have a more effectual, more financially self-sufficient federal government.

As a member of the legislature of New York, Hamilton argued forcefully and at length in favor of a bill to recognize the sovereignty of the State of Vermont , against numerous objections to its constitutionality and policy. Consideration of the bill was deferred to a later date. From to , Hamilton exchanged letters with Nathaniel Chipman , a lawyer representing Vermont.

After the Constitution of the United States went into effect, Hamilton said, "One of the first subjects of deliberation with the new Congress will be the independence of Kentucky, for which the southern states will be anxious. The northern will be glad to send a counterpoise in Vermont. In , he was awarded a Master of Arts degree from his alma mater , the former King's College, now reconstituted as Columbia College.

Early in the convention, Hamilton made a speech proposing a president-for-life; it had no effect upon the deliberations of the convention. He proposed to have an elected president and elected senators who would serve for life, contingent upon "good behavior" and subject to removal for corruption or abuse; this idea contributed later to the hostile view of Hamilton as a monarchist sympathizer, held by James Madison.

The hereditary interest of the king was so interwoven with that of the nation, and his personal emoluments so great, that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted from abroad Let one executive be appointed for life who dares execute his powers. Hamilton argued, "And let me observe that an executive is less dangerous to the liberties of the people when in office during life than for seven years.

It may be said this constitutes as an elective monarchy But by making the executive subject to impeachment , the term 'monarchy' cannot apply Madison's perspective all but isolated Hamilton from his fellow delegates and others who felt they did not reflect the ideas of revolution and liberty. During the convention, Hamilton constructed a draft for the Constitution based on the convention debates, but he never presented it.

This draft had most of the features of the actual Constitution. In this draft, the Senate was to be elected in proportion to the population, being two-fifths the size of the House, and the president and senators were to be elected through complex multistage elections, in which chosen electors would elect smaller bodies of electors; they would hold office for life, but were removable for misconduct.

The president would have an absolute veto. The Supreme Court was to have immediate jurisdiction over all lawsuits involving the United States, and state governors were to be appointed by the federal government. At the end of the convention, Hamilton was still not content with the final Constitution, but signed it anyway as a vast improvement over the Articles of Confederation, and urged his fellow delegates to do so also.

He first used the popularity of the Constitution by the masses to compel George Clinton to sign, but was unsuccessful. Clinton's faction wanted to amend the Constitution, while maintaining the state's right to secede if their attempts failed, and members of Hamilton's faction were against any conditional ratification, under the impression that New York would not be accepted into the Union.

During the state convention, New Hampshire and Virginia becoming the ninth and tenth states to ratify the Constitution, respectively, had ensured any adjournment would not happen and a compromise would have to be reached. He made the largest contribution to that effort, writing 51 of the 85 essays published. Hamilton supervised the entire project, enlisted the participants, wrote the majority of the essays, and oversaw the publication.

During the project, each person was responsible for their areas of expertise. Jay covered foreign relations. Madison covered the history of republics and confederacies, along with the anatomy of the new government. Hamilton covered the branches of government most pertinent to him: the executive and judicial branches, with some aspects of the Senate, as well as covering military matters and taxation.

Hamilton wrote the first paper signed as Publius , and all of the subsequent papers were signed under the name.

Amazon alexander hamilton biography

Hamilton and Madison worked to describe the anarchic state of the confederation No. In , Washington—who had become the first president of the United States —appointed Hamilton to be his cabinet's Secretary of the Treasury on the advice of Robert Morris , Washington's initial pick. Before the adjournment of the House in September , they requested Hamilton to make a report on suggestions to improve the public credit by January Although they agreed on additional taxes such as distilleries and duties on imported liquors and land taxes, Madison feared that the securities from the government debt would fall into foreign hands.

In the report, Hamilton felt that the securities should be paid at full value to their legitimate owners, including those who took the financial risk of buying government bonds that most experts thought would never be redeemed. He argued that liberty and property security were inseparable, and that the government should honor the contracts, as they formed the basis of public and private morality.

To Hamilton, the proper handling of the government debt would also allow America to borrow at affordable interest rates and would also be a stimulant to the economy. Hamilton divided the debt into national and state, and further divided the national debt into foreign and domestic debt. While there was agreement on how to handle the foreign debt, especially with France, there was not with regards to the national debt held by domestic creditors.

During the Revolutionary War, affluent citizens had invested in bonds, and war veterans had been paid with promissory notes and IOUs that plummeted in price during the Confederation. In response, the war veterans sold the securities to speculators for as little as fifteen to twenty cents on the dollar. Hamilton felt the money from the bonds should not go to the soldiers who had shown little faith in the country's future, but the speculators that had bought the bonds from the soldiers.

The process of attempting to track down the original bondholders along with the government showing discrimination among the classes of holders if the war veterans were to be compensated also weighed in as factors for Hamilton. As for the state debts, Hamilton suggested consolidating them with the national debt and label it as federal debt, for the sake of efficiency on a national scale.

The last portion of the report dealt with eliminating the debt by utilizing a sinking fund that would retire five percent of the debt annually until it was paid off. Due to the bonds being traded well below their face value, the purchases would benefit the government as the securities rose in price. Some of the negative views expressed in the House were that the notion of programs that resembled British practice were wicked, and that the balance of power would be shifted away from the representatives to the executive branch.

William Maclay suspected that several congressmen were involved in government securities, seeing Congress in an unholy league with New York speculators. The involvement of those in Hamilton's circle such as Schuyler, William Duer , James Duane , Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King as speculators was not favorable to those against the report, either, though Hamilton personally did not own or deal a share in the debt.

Although he was not against current holders of government debt to profit, he wanted the windfall to go to the original holders. Madison did not feel that the original holders had lost faith in the government but sold their securities out of desperation. The fight for the national government to assume state debt was a longer issue and lasted over four months.

During the period, the resources that Hamilton was to apply to the payment of state debts was requested by Alexander White , and was rejected due to Hamilton's not being able to prepare information by March 3, and was even postponed by his own supporters in spite of configuring a report the next day, which consisted of a series of additional duties to meet the interest on the state debts.

During this period, Hamilton bypassed the rising issue of slavery in Congress, after Quakers petitioned for its abolition, returning to the issue the following year. Another issue in which Hamilton played a role was the temporary location of the capital from New York City. Tench Coxe was sent to speak to Maclay to bargain about the capital being temporarily located to Philadelphia, as a single vote in the Senate was needed and five in the House for the bill to pass.

These included theories from Adam Smith, [ ] extensive studies on the Bank of England , the blunders of the Bank of North America and his experience in establishing the Bank of New York. Since the government did not have the money, it would borrow the money from the bank itself, and repay the loan in ten even annual installments.

The bill passed through the Senate practically without a problem, but objections to the proposal increased by the time it reached the House of Representatives. It was generally held by critics that Hamilton was serving the interests of the Northeast by means of the bank, [ ] and those of the agrarian lifestyle would not benefit from it.

The potential of the capital not being moved to the Potomac if the bank was to have a firm establishment in Philadelphia was a more significant reason, and actions that Pennsylvania members of Congress took to keep the capital there made both men anxious. Madison warned the Pennsylvania congress members that he would attack the bill as unconstitutional in the House, and followed up on his threat.

Washington hesitated to sign the bill, as he received suggestions from Attorney General Edmund Randolph and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson dismissed the Necessary and Proper Clause as reasoning for the creation of a national bank, stating that the enumerated powers "can all be carried into execution without a bank. Many of Hamilton's ideas for this report were from European economists, resolutions from the and Continental Congress meetings, and people such as Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Jefferson.

Because the most circulated coins in the United States at the time were Spanish currency , Hamilton proposed that minting a United States dollar weighing almost as much as the Spanish peso would be the simplest way to introduce a national currency. Hamilton proposed that the U. By , Hamilton's principles were adopted by Congress, resulting in the Coinage Act of , and the creation of the mint.

There was to be a ten-dollar gold Eagle coin, a silver dollar, and fractional money ranging from one-half to fifty cents. Smuggling off American coasts was an issue before the Revolutionary War, and after the Revolution it was more problematic. Along with smuggling, lack of shipping control, pirating, and a revenue unbalance were also major problems.

Concerning some of the details of the System of Cutters, [ ] Hamilton wanted the first ten cutters in different areas in the United States, from New England to Georgia. The fabric of the sails was to be domestically manufactured; [ ] and provisions were made for the employees' food supply and etiquette when boarding ships. One of the principal sources of revenue Hamilton prevailed upon Congress to approve was an excise tax on whiskey.

In his first Tariff Bill in January , Hamilton proposed to raise the three million dollars needed to pay for government operating expenses and interest on domestic and foreign debts by means of an increase on duties on imported wines, distilled spirits, tea, coffee, and domestic spirits. It failed, with Congress complying with most recommendations excluding the excise tax on whiskey.

The same year, Madison modified Hamilton's tariff to involve only imported duties; it was passed in September. Opposition initially came from Pennsylvania's House of Representatives protesting the tax. William Maclay had noted that not even the Pennsylvanian legislators had been able to enforce excise taxes in the western regions of the state.

Hamilton had attempted to appease the opposition with lowered tax rates, but it did not suffice. Strong opposition to the whiskey tax by cottage producers in remote, rural regions erupted into the Whiskey Rebellion in ; in Western Pennsylvania and western Virginia , whiskey was the basic export product and was fundamental to the local economy.

In response to the rebellion, believing compliance with the laws was vital to the establishment of federal authority, Hamilton accompanied to the rebellion's site President Washington, General Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee , and more federal troops than were ever assembled in one place during the Revolution. This overwhelming display of force intimidated the leaders of the insurrection, ending the rebellion virtually without bloodshed.

Hamilton's next report was his Report on Manufactures. Although he was requested by Congress on January 15, , for a report for manufacturing that would expand the United States' independence, the report was not submitted until December 5, Hamilton argued for industrial policy to support a modern manufacturing industry in the United States. In , Hamilton, along with Coxe and several entrepreneurs from New York City and Philadelphia formed the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures , a private industrial corporation.

In May , the directors decided to examine the Great Falls of the Passaic River in New Jersey as a possible location for a manufacturing center. On July 4, , the society directors met Philip Schuyler at Abraham Godwin 's hotel on the Passaic River, where they led a tour prospecting the area for the national manufactory. It was originally suggested that they dig mile-long trenches and build the factories away from the falls, but Hamilton argued that it would be too costly and laborious.

The location at Great Falls of the Passaic River in New Jersey was selected due to access to raw materials, it being densely inhabited, and having access to water power from the falls of the Passaic. William Duer , the governor of the program, was sent to debtors' prison, where he died. When France and Britain went to war in early , all four members of the Cabinet were consulted on what to do.

Hamilton and the Federalists wished for more trade with Britain, the largest trading partner of the newly formed United States. The Republicans saw monarchist Britain as the main threat to republicanism and proposed instead to start a trade war. The result was a treaty denounced by the Republicans, but Hamilton mobilized support throughout the land.

The treaty resolved issues remaining from the Revolution, averted war, and made possible ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain. Several European states had formed the Second League of Armed Neutrality against incursions on their neutral rights; the cabinet was also consulted on whether the United States should join the alliance and decided not to.

It kept that decision secret, but Hamilton revealed it in private to George Hammond, the British minister to the United States, without telling Jay or anyone else. His act remained unknown until Hammond's dispatches were read in the s. This revelation may have had limited effect on the negotiations; Jay did threaten to join the League at one point, but the British had other reasons not to view the alliance as a serious threat.

Hamilton's wife suffered a miscarriage [ ] while he was absent during his armed repression of the Whiskey Rebellion. Hamilton grew dissatisfied with what he viewed as a lack of a comprehensive plan to fix the public debt. He wished to have new taxes passed with older ones made permanent and stated that any surplus from the excise tax on liquor would be pledged to lower public debt.

His proposals were included in a bill by Congress within slightly over a month after his departure as treasury secretary. They favored strong state governments based in rural America and protected by state militias as opposed to a strong national government supported by a national army and navy. They denounced Hamilton as insufficiently devoted to republicanism, too friendly toward corrupt Britain and the monarchy in general, and too oriented toward cities, business and banking.

The two-party system began to emerge as political parties coalesced around competing interests. A congressional caucus, led by Madison, Jefferson, and William Branch Giles , began as an opposition group to Hamilton's financial programs. Hamilton and his allies began to call themselves the Federalists. Hamilton assembled a nationwide coalition to garner support for the administration, including the expansive financial programs Hamilton had made administration policy and especially the president's policy of neutrality in the European war between Britain and France.

The Republicans opposed banks and cities and favored the series of unstable revolutionary governments in France. They built their own national coalition to oppose the Federalists. Both sides gained the support of local political factions, and each side developed its own partisan newspapers. All of their newspapers were characterized by intense personal attacks, major exaggerations, and invented claims.

An additional partisan irritant to Hamilton was the United States Senate election in New York , which resulted in the election of Democratic-Republican candidate Aaron Burr over Federalist candidate Philip Schuyler, the incumbent and Hamilton's father-in-law. Hamilton blamed Burr personally for this outcome, and negative characterizations of Burr began to appear in his correspondence thereafter.

The two men did work together from time to time thereafter on various projects, including Hamilton's army of and the Manhattan Water Company. Hamilton's resignation as secretary of the treasury in did not remove him from public life. With the resumption of his law practice, he remained close to Washington as an advisor and friend. Hamilton influenced Washington in the composition of his farewell address by writing drafts for Washington to compare with the latter's draft, although when Washington contemplated retirement in , he had consulted Madison for a draft that was used in a similar manner to Hamilton's.

In the election of , under the Constitution as it stood then, each of the presidential electors had two votes, which they were to cast for different men from different states. The one who received the most votes would become president, the second-most, vice president. This system was not designed with the operation of parties in mind, as they had been thought disreputable and factious.

The Federalists planned to deal with this by having all their electors vote for John Adams , then vice president, and all but a few for Thomas Pinckney. Adams resented Hamilton's influence with Washington and considered him overambitious and scandalous in his private life; Hamilton compared Adams unfavorably with Washington and thought him too emotionally unstable to be president.

If all this worked, Pinckney would have more votes than Adams, Pinckney would become president, and Adams would remain vice president, but it did not work. The Federalists found out about it and northern Federalists voted for Adams but not for Pinckney, in sufficient numbers that Pinckney came in third and Jefferson became vice president.

In the summer of , Hamilton became the first major American politician publicly involved in a sex scandal. According to Hamilton's account Maria approached him at his house in Philadelphia , claiming that her husband James Reynolds was abusive and had abandoned her, and she wished to return to her relatives in New York but lacked the means. The two began an intermittent illicit affair that lasted approximately until June Over the course of that year, while the affair was taking place, James Reynolds was well aware of his wife's infidelity, and likely orchestrated it from the beginning.

He continually supported their relationship to extort blackmail money regularly from Hamilton. The common practice of the day for men of equal social standing was for the wronged husband to seek retribution in a duel , but Reynolds, of a lower social status and realizing how much Hamilton had to lose if his activity came into public view, resorted to extortion.

In November , James Reynolds and his associate Jacob Clingman were arrested for counterfeiting and speculating in Revolutionary War veterans' unpaid back wages. Clingman was released on bail and relayed information to Democratic-Republican congressman James Monroe that Reynolds had evidence incriminating Hamilton in illicit activity as Treasury Secretary.

Monroe consulted with congressmen Muhlenberg and Venable on what actions to take and the congressmen confronted Hamilton on December 15, The trio agreed on their honor to keep the documents privately with the utmost confidence. Rockefeller, Sr. Purchase options and add-ons. Report an issue with this product. Previous slide of product details.

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Show details Hide details. Choose items to buy together. Popular titles by this author. Page 1 of 1 Start again Page 1 of 1. Previous set of slides. Titan: The Life of John D. Ron Chernow. Alexander Hamilton. Washington: A Life. However, I must point out that Jackson, by threatening the use of federal force to put down South Carolina's nullification of the "Tariff of Abominations" was hardly reflecting a Jeffersonian position on state's rights.

Indeed, Calhoun's position that a state had the right to nullify federal laws that the state viewed as unconstitutional was largely derived from Jefferson's and Madison's Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. McDonald's closing remark on Hamilton's legacy is what really confuses me. He says that after the middle of the 20th Century American government "became increasingly Jeffersonian, governed by coercion and party spirit, its people progressively more dependent and less self-reliant Perhaps Jefferson was the father of parties in America, but I feel obliged to point out that government coercion and people becoming progressively more dependent and less self-reliant were not part of his party's agenda.

These attributes of government are neither Jeffersonian nor Hamiltonian. Rather they find their origin in the policies of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson who borrowed them from 19th and 20th Century European socialists. In summary, I think that's a fairly minor quibble with a book and author that I greatly value. Great book lots of information helped me a lot with my research paper project on Alexander Hamilton.

Arrived on time and was as described. Alexander Hamilton emerges in this book as a profound thinker who mixed intellectual prowess with genuine political skill. Especially revealing is how much he influenced General Washington as President, especially in the conduct of what we would call monetary and fiscal policy. It was a brave decision.

Historian Forrest McDonald was well into writing a biography of Alexander Hamilton when he realized that a conventional telling of Hamilton's life wasn't working. What did he do? Be sensible and fix what he had? He burned everything and started over again. Thank goodness he did, because he has given us the definitive Hamilton bio. If you really want to understand Alexander Hamilton, this is the book to read.

To get inside Hamilton's head, McDonald not only read everything Hamilton ever wrote but all the books and treatises that influenced his thinking. Who were the writers Hamilton read? Then, slowly, tediously, I began to reconstruct my understanding of what Hamilton did with his life, to reconcile my view of Hamilton with Hamilton's view of Hamilton.

What was "funding and assumption" and how it made provision for the public debt is explained in detail, as well as the linchpin of Hamilton's financial policies, the national bank forerunner of today's Federal Reserve. McDonald gives a unique insight into Hamilton's character as well. Quite simply, Hamilton was an unabashed romantic.

Writes McDonald: "Like the sentimentalist, the dreamer, and the do-gooder, the romantic is ruled by his heart rather than his head. Unlike them, he is also tough-minded and realistic, and that creates within him a turbulence they never know: he drives himself to excel, requires discipline of himself far beyond that of other men, is ever concerned with honor, sometimes obsessively.

A born problem solver, he would have found a way to reimburse slave-owners for their "property" and made southern plantations highly profitable with free labor. The young nation would have thus spared the lives of , as yet unborn Americans who died in the Civil War. I have read several books about Hamilton and this is by far the best. McDonald was not interested in portraying Hamilton's personal life -- for that, Chernow's popular biography is excellent -- but in demonstrating why the public life of Hamilton was so important to the early years of the United States under the Constitution and to what the United States became.

McDonald was a thoroughgoing Hamiltonian, but he got there after a lot of study; his reasons show. And although he was deeply learned academic, his writing often sparkles: the last pages of the biography have some beautiful passages, whether or not one fully accepts his conclusion that the US became great when it followed the principles of Hamilton.